


Minutiae.

by fearless_seas



Series: Thirteen Years. [5]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Blow Jobs, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, Injury, M/M, Minor Character Death, Music, Pining, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 07:30:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15529263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fearless_seas/pseuds/fearless_seas
Summary: (n) the small, precise, or trivial details of something.





	Minutiae.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to myself, I guess? Since my birthday is tomorrow. Rip.

**\----- 1986 -----**

**March 23rd**

  
  


          Nelson carries the Brazilian flag underneath his arm as he stalks down the paddock towards him. He has a large smile on his face as if nothing seems to matter to him. 

          “Two Brazilians on the podium at the Brazilian grand prix?”, he beams widely and then drapes the flag over the back of his neck to blow the sweat off of his lips. 

          “Must feel nice,” Alain murmurs, sitting down to rest with a hand on his jaw. He tilts his gaze up, for a short moment he watches Nelson and he can convince himself that he is Ayrton. He turns to the side, the lick of his curls spring up and Alain has to remind himself they have less freckles than they do. It is cruel, isn’t it? 

          Nelson tosses him out of his daydream when he laces his arms around the back of his neck. He presses his mouth right up to the shell of his ear. “We should do something to celebrate,” he whispers and it sends sudden jolts of electricity down his spine. 

          So they do. It is mostly Nelson’s celebration, when he fucks him. He can fabricate for just one second, when they flip him over and he cannot see his face. The thoughts linger, the hands are softer but more roughly stemmed; the voice is higher and drips in a melancholy way. Eyes that linger on his back are dark, bottomless even, and absolutely unreadable. They go on forever, that expression. When he finishes he finds a name pushing up from his throat, sticking to his lungs and threatening to be brought out into the light. 

          “Jesus fucking Christ, Alain,” Nelson gasps, shuddering against him and Alain blinks his eyes open. That was extraordinary, he senses it. He shoves the name down his throat as to not ruin Nelson’s mood. But he mutters it when he marches back to his own hotel room. The sky reminds him of it, their eyes, something deep, somber, beautiful, never understood and more importantly of all: dangerous. 

_           Ayrton _ .

 

_____________________

**May 23rd**

  
  


          The first time and, perhaps, the last time Alain saw Nelson cry started at the back of a lonely restaurant at one in the morning. A storm is rattling itself through the city streets outside of the windows and the streets are pouring with rain. The atmosphere is filled with tension and that special scent after the weather falls. Nelson doesn’t like to drink that much and while Alain muses over his glass of wine, they are staring out of the window with a peculiar soft expression about the lips and eyes. 

          “Remember that night of the driver’s strike,” Nelson out of the blue says, the only thing visible of his expression being the batting of his eyelashes. 

          Alain sets his glass down, “Which one?”

          “The only one that mattered, South Africa,” he is oddly quiet like as someone who feels insignificant would speak. 

          A shatter of lightening rings in the distance that is followed by the crinkle of thunder. “What about it?”

          “He was playing the piano, remember,” their eyes fall to a corner of of the room where a empty piano is settled by the door. The bartender sweeps a dirty rag over the counter and observes them. Alain takes this as the queue to leave and he pats his shoulder when he rises. “Gilles too, he was playing with him, don’t you remember?”

          Alain sighs, halts his actions--of course he remembers all of these little things. Nelson stands up, keeps his eyes to the ground and his quietude concerns him. Alain shifts his focus  away from the piano because he is worried he may imagine Elio, sitting there postulated with a calm expression and his fingers playing over the keys as if they dance beneath just for him. Nelson pauses, however, in front of the piano, stares at it for a long minute. 

          “Do you know anything?”, he inquires, resting a hand on top of it. 

          Alain shrugs, hooking his coat underneath his arm, “Only a little, I took lessons for only a year when I was little. I was never any good.”

          “Would you play something?”, Alain is surprised by the question, so much so that he nearly drops his jacket. 

          “Play something?”, he echoes, “Why do you want me to play something?”

          Nelson tilts his head to the side. “I don’t play. Would you?”, he comes closer and the hand upon his wrist appears to be pleading with him. It takes him a moment of hesitation, but eventually Alain gives in, nods, sets his coat on top of the instrument and postulates down in front of the keys. He taps the keys a little, tries to recall something from his piano master except how often his tiny fingers were whipped when he made a mistake. Only a little bit of _To A Wild Rose_ is what he can recollect; he starts playing that awkwardly. He gets a few measures in when he is interrupted.

          “You are playing it all wrong,” Nelson shakes his head. Alain removes his hands from the board and is surprised when he steals the seat next to him. “Move over,” he shoves him and they both are cramped next to one another. “It is like this,” he submits his hands on the keys and begins to play. It’s the same song, smoother definitely, each note drawn and sharp. 

          Alain is a little taken back as he studies their fingers ghosting over the keys. “I thought you said you did not play?” 

          Nelson smirks, “There are a lot of things about me you do not know.” Alain wondered just what else there was in that man. “You do remember, right?”, he peers over at him as if searching for something; something to set his mind free. 

          “Yes,” Alain mutters slowly, “I remember.” 

          “It was the same night--”, Nelson suddenly pulls his hands off of the piano and the music stops. Eerie, unfinished silence fills the air. It feels like decades ago. That infinite hope of tomorrow.

          Alain taps a few notes on the piano before heading out into the rain. It takes a minute, standing underneath the porch hooding and covering his coat over his head to shelter himself from the wet. Nelson doesn’t do this, he only walks, treads in the rain and allows his hair to become matted to his forehead and his clothes to become soaked. Alain cannot tell, he goes away in silence next to him, glancing at him from the corner of his eye every so often. They put their head down as they stride, gritting their teeth together.

          It becomes too much. “Nelson, are you okay?”, he puts a hand on his upper arm. 

          He jerks himself away, “I am fine.”

          “Are you sure--”

          “I said I’m fine”, he growls, but his voice is wavering and his tone shakes as the though the phrases there were unsure of itself. “Don’t ask again,” he demands. 

          “Not to be an asshole,” Alain pokes and Nelson flickers his gaze over, “But actually talking sometimes might help.”

          He scoffs and shakes his head, “You don’t want to hear about my stupid issues, you just want to make yourself feel better, that is all.”

          “Nelson,” Alain pauses and holds him back, grabs his arm and tugs him into place in front of him. His eyes are rimmed red and his skin drips with rain. “It’s okay to care about people, you know? About Didier, or Elio, Gilles, or me--”, he cuts himself off.

          “Who?”, Nelson questions sternly, “Who else?”, he latches onto his arm. “Who, Alain?”

          He doesn’t say, or maybe he simply doesn’t want to toy with him anymore.

 

_____________________

**June 22nd**

  
  


          “I am entirely convinced you want to kill yourself,” Alain hisses, narrowing his brows as he squats in front of Nelson on the ground with their scraped palms flipped upwards to the ceiling. He wishes that he wasn’t showered with quiet fury at this moment. A finger tip pokes at one of the incisions at the open skin and Nelson flinches immediately. 

          “Watch it, you fuck!”, he tries to rip his hand away but Alain maintains his grip and tugs it back towards him. 

          “Forget that,” he sighs, “I  _ know _ you want to die.”

          Nelson smiles as if it was a joke, “Maybe. Accidents happen.”

          Alain manages a false bit of laughter. “I wish you were more careful,” he pushes the hands back to him and Nelson takes his own turn as examining them: the angry crimson cuts from the screw in the gear shift that gave out during the race. 

          “Funny joke, it seems almost like you might miss me,” he tries clenching and unclenching his hands but only seethes at the sharp agony. “I hope they leave scars, the girls always love those.”

          “Whatever you say, Nelson.”

          “It’s true! You can’t deny scars make a person way more hotter.”

          “You can’t say ‘way more hotter’, it’s ‘more hot.’” Alain had to agree though (he'd never tell them that). But some are outside and some within; in the daylight or hidden. He would figure too many knicks would make paper skin weaker but it was quite the opposite for him. 

 

________________________

**July 5th**

  
  


          Alain approached the pit wall where Nelson was speaking with Nigel. He jumped up next to Nigel and they greeted him with a grunt before folding back to Nelson. Ayrton was there a few meters away, leaning against the wall with his fingers thumbing over his lips in thought. A soft, summer breeze rolls through, ruffles up his hair and there is the scent of sunburnt leaves in the air. Very quickly, a reporter slips in front of them with a photographer, motions for them to scrunch in closer on the wall and they do so. Nelson hooks his arm over Nigel’s shoulder and begins poking Alain in the side of the head. He is chortling so he doesn’t notice it when someone comes up on his other side and pushes in next to him. He moves his attention away, wraps his arm over Nigel’s shoulder and then puts out the other. Ayrton is sitting there beside him, an amused expression playing on his lips and it takes him back.

          “Get it closer,” they are insisted of and Ayrton’s ankle knocks up against his. 

          Alain swallows and points his gaze towards the camera. They wait a few second, a few other photographers join the parade and Ayrton flashes a thumbs-up above his head. Ayrton shifts his hand behind his back, wraps it around his tiny waist and tugs him a bit closer. Alain holds his breath, but slowly but surely his eyes don’t listen and fall towards the man on his right. The soft arch of their nose and the slow but deliberate flash of striking, shadowed lashes over hooded, black eyes. Alain places his arm around his shoulder, tries to bat Nelson’s hand away. For a moment, his eyes could be misleading him, but he saw Ayrton admit a small smile. After it is done, Ayrton slides a hand to the small of his back as he jumps off of the wall, his hand lingers for a second (it could’ve been an eternity) before trailing away. He follows them leaving the pit wall until Nelson calls for him. 

          God, he is a silent mess, now isn’t he?

 

_________________________

**October 27th**

  
  


          “How does it feel to be a  _ duplo campeão mundial _ ?”, Nelson grins across the dinner table. 

          Alain pokes at his food, his mind still swimming from the restless night of sleep he had. “Shouldn’t you already know?”, he bites into his food, “You are a double champion too, are not you?”

          Nelson shoves this away with a wave of his hand, “I am different than you.” He calls for the waiter and asks for the bill. “I know how it feels, but I don’t know how it feels to you.” A few crumpled bills land from his jeans pocket onto the tabletop, he shoves them towards the end of the table unceremoniously. “So, I ask again: how does it feel?”

          Alain senses an extended and tired breath leave his body, “It is good.” He knows it is not enough, but it is honestly all that he can make out.

          “That’s it?”, Nelson rolls his eyes, “You’re so quiet and boring.”

          Alain frowns, “I am not boring.”

          Nelson leans across the table towards him, “Then prove it.”

          “Fine,” he sits up a little taller. “It is fulfilling.”

          “And?”

          “I am grateful to the team.”

          Another roll, “I am someone you know, not the press; forget all of that shit.”

          Alain is growing a little frustrated so he swallows some water with a slice of salt to his tone. “It’s everything I could of dreamed about,” he shuts his eyes, “It allows me to remember purpose, gives me reason.” It is quieter so he peeks his eyes back open. Nelson is staring at him, wide eyes blinking with perhaps a hint of adoration. 

          “That was much better,” he beamed and scrapes out his seat. 

          “I am not boring,” Alain repeats. 

          “That is what you are concerned about?”, Nelson leads him out of the door. “I only said that to get you riled up,” the keys fumble into the ignition and he starts the car once Alain shuts the passenger side door behind him. 

          It sticks with him though. “I am not boring,” he arches closer and places a hand on the center of their pants. Nelson blinks in surprise and turns his eyes off of the road for only a second, down towards Alain’s hand slipping into his waistband and then his eyes back to the street. The zipper is undone slowly and he draws him out, strokes a few times with a hum. Nelson tightens his grip on the wheel and resists the urge to bend his neck back. “Say it,” he callously whispers and he has them wrapped about his finger. 

          “Okay,” Nelson huffs and swallows, “You are not boring.”

          “Again?”

          “You, Alain Prost, are not boring,” the frustration in his voice evident and tight as he bucks his hips up into his hand while still trying to concentrate on the road.

          “That is better,” he leans forward in between the seats with gratification and slips his mouth between their thighs.. He enjoys having this rare slice of control. A chaos of theirs that he finds a tool to soothe

**Author's Note:**

> As per usual, my Tumblr is @pieregasly. I hope you enjoyed, drop a comment if you did, thanks, I read and respond to every single one.


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